Page 40 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Hopper

D espite Chris reassuring me several times over text that she was fine, I still expect to turn up to the track to find her mortally wounded.

Call it déjà vu or good ol’ paranoia. But when I rush out beyond the parking lot to see her chatting amicably with a teenager, I practically do a cartoon screech of my feet.

“Hey!” Chris calls, waving and then jogging the two hundred feet over to me as I stride toward her. It physically hurts to see her again and not be able to touch her, because we’re not alone.

“Hey—” I say, biting back the baby or sweetheart or whatever it is that was going to come out oh so naturally after that word.

“Thanks for coming so fast,” she says, her breathing slightly elevated.

“It wasn’t as fast as I’d like,” I say. I stuff my hands into my pockets, because I want so fucking badly to scoop her up into my arms. To kiss the shit out of her. “You sure you’re okay? ”

“Of course,” she laughs. “You can see the issue, right?” She looks over her shoulder at the kid kneeling next to the bike, poking at its wheel.

“Yes, bangles. I can see. Is she okay?”

“She’s okay.” Her face flashes with something I don’t like.

“You sure about that?”

“No, but there’s not much I can do about it right now. And she needs a ride home before five.”

I give a nod, and because the kid’s back is to us, I reach over and take Chris’s jaw in my hand. I lean in and kiss her. It’s chaste, just lips, but it feels like I’ve been fucking scorched.

“Hopper!” she glances over at the girl, whose head is still dipped down.

“Three days, Chris,” I breathe. “It’s been three fucking days.”

She looks at me admonishingly. But still, her fingers go to her lips, her cheeks pink. She felt it too. I give her a wink. A smirk too.

She play shoves me. Or maybe real shoves me, and I laugh, letting her.

But as we walk over to the kid, it takes everything in me not to slip my hand into Chris’s.

Fighting the urge is like trying to hold a tsunami back.

But if the kid sees, that’s one too many people who’ve seen us together.

It doesn’t matter how sweet and well-intentioned people are; I can’t trust them not to talk, and she could corroborate the customs agent’s story.

I don’t fucking care.

“I had to gas the stupid truck up,” I say as we cross the muddy track. “And then help an elderly lady across the road.”

Chris laughs. “That’s funny.”

“I’m not even kidding,” I say. “No one was helping her!”

Chris laughs, and I want to bottle the sound. “Were you a boy scout?”

“Always wanted to be.”

There’s clearly a note of truth in my tone, which has her looking curiously at me.

I give her a smile to make myself seem not quite so pathetic.

“My dad wasn’t into that kind of thing.” The truth was, he hated anything where he had to interact with other parents.

He assumed they were all idiots, or that they were judging him.

That latter part was probably true, even though it certainly wasn’t his most egregious parenting moment.

When we get to the bike, the kid stands straight, looking at me with huge, round eyes.

It’s normal for people to look like that when I turn up.

That sounds cocky as hell, but it’s just the way it is.

I stopped wishing years ago that I could enter a room like a normal human and instead forced myself to just get used to it.

“Hey,” I say, holding out a hand. “I’m Hopper.”

She doesn’t take my hand.

“It’s okay, Shay. He’s my friend,” Chris says in a tone like she’s speaking to a skittish kitten. “Well, boss, actually. He’s cool, I promise. Hopper, this is Shay.”

I casually switch my hand to a wave.

Shay swallows. “Hi,” she says. “I—I didn’t know it wouldn’t start again. It’s never happened before, but Chris said it’s normal. I’m sorry for the trouble. I can maybe pay you for the ride? I don’t have much money, but I have some.”

Chris looks confused. “Shay, honey, please don’t worry about that. Hopper’s happy to help, right? And please, just think of him like a normal guy. That’s all he is to me.”

She looks up at me, a beseeching lift of her eyebrows indicating I should play along.

Normally I’d give Chris a hard time for the “that’s all he is to me” line, but I don’t because I’m too busy grinning and being genuinely pleased.

I’m pleased not just to be giving this poor shy girl a ride home, but because she doesn’t know who I am.

It happens sometimes. Usually around little kids or older people.

But it’s always a nice surprise. Like cosplaying my life if I’d never gone down this path.

“I am a normal guy, for the record,” I say to Shay.

Chris frowns and I stick out my tongue at her, which makes her even more confused.

But Shay cracks the tiniest of smiles.

“Let’s get this bike loaded up,” I say. Between being with Chris again, feeling like I’m genuinely helping this kid, and that little smile, I feel on top of the fucking world.

As we drive away from the kid’s house, I’m feeling less pleased with myself and considerably more hopeless. But it’s nothing compared to the way Chris is looking.

“Did you see that place?” she whispers, tapping her hand anxiously on her folded arms. “We shouldn’t have let her go back there.”

“Chris, you said yourself there’s nothing we could do that wouldn’t be classified as abduction.”

“I know. It’s just so fucking unfair.”

It’s only when I glance over and see the sheen of tears on her cheeks that I realize the gravity of this situation.

It wasn’t just the run-down house with the dilapidated barn out back and junk on the lawn.

Or even a girl returning to a tough situation.

This is personal for her. Chris told me she was in care for six years until she aged out of the system.

I don’t know the specific details of what happened during that time, but I know enough.

I wish I knew what to do to help her. I wish I knew what to say.

At least I can take her hand as she tells me about meeting the girl. I thread my fingers through hers the way I wanted to earlier now that we’re in the privacy of this truck.

Chris surprises me by telling me it’s her bike the girl was riding.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say something like “Really?” Like I didn’t already know that.

But I’m already having a hard enough time keeping my mouth shut around her.

I want to tell her everything. Every dark and dirty secret.

But I can’t, not if I want her to stay, and that’s my fucking shame right now.

As she tells me about how she found the girl and how it felt like the strangest coincidence that it was her bike—that the girl could have been her—I wrestle with my own turmoil.

I want so fucking badly to tell her about our coincidence, how I fell for her before I knew it was her.

But it’s so messy I can’t even begin to go there.

I just want to enjoy every precious second I get with her before she hates me.

I know that’s selfish, but right now, I don’t fucking care. All I want is Chris.

I drive to her place, since I don’t want to assume she wants to go anywhere else. I don’t want to presume she wants to be with me right now either, so I want her to have an easier out than being at the beach house.

When I put the truck in park, neither of us makes a move to leave.

Chris grips my hand tight as she peers out the rain-streaked window.

I want to ask her what’s going on in her head, but I don’t want to push her either.

So we sit in silence for a bit, until Chris looks over at me. Her wet eyes are killing me.

“Do you want to come in?” she asks.

My stomach flips. More than anything, I want to come in.

But I don’t want her to feel pressured to do anything she doesn’t want to do.

The more she’s with me, the more I realize I have no right to feel so fucking free and easy around her.

I thought being around her would make me happy, and it did.

It so fucking did. But seeing her hurting like this just reminds me of how much I’m going to end up hurting her. How much of this is built on a lie.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” I say, the words so unwanted I barely manage to get them out.

The hurt that skitters across her face has me closing my eyes, bringing our joined hands to my lips. “I want to, more than anything,” I say. “I just—there’s a lot going on that makes this complicated. ”

When I open my eyes, Chris is looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read.

“You know I’m a grown woman, right? That I can make decisions about my life?”

“Of course.”

“Good,” she says. She’s not crying anymore. She’s a little pissed, and for some reason, that makes me feel better. “Then trust that I’m in this situation knowing the outcome isn’t going to be riding off on horses into the sunset.”

It feels like a knife has jabbed its way between my ventricles. But I smile. “I can get us horses. I can get you fucking anything, Chris.”

Her eyes seem to melt, her pupils widening, and suddenly, none of the rest of it matters. “Come here,” I say, unfastening both our seat belts and pulling her over so she’s on top of me. It’s a tight fit because of the steering wheel, but I like it like that.

“You look so fucking beautiful,” I tell her, my forehead pressed against her collarbone. “And the way you smell?—”

“I’m covered in dried mud,” Chris says as she threads her hands in my hair. The feeling sends tingles down my scalp and the back of my neck. Farther down. “And I probably smell like mud and sweat.”

“You smell good enough to fucking eat,” I growl against her, dropping my teeth onto her shoulder.

She laughs, and at least for right now, I think things are going to be okay.